The present invention relates to compliance management, and more specifically, to compliance management for regulated facilities.
Businesses that are governed by local, state, and/or federal regulations are typically responsible for adopting a plan or course of action, such as monitoring and inspecting equipment and conditions related to the business in order to ensure compliance with these regulations. In addition, in many cases, individuals who perform inspections as part of the course of action must be certified or licensed to do so. Thus, the businesses must ensure that the individuals performing the inspection are qualified (e.g., through some authorized training process) and that the inspectors' qualifications (e.g., license) are always up-to-date.
Most businesses implement a manual process in which an inspector or authorized individual addresses items for inspection using a printed checklist of the items to inspect as a guide. This manual process can be cumbersome and is prone to errors, particularly in situations where a large number of regulations promulgated by multiple sources of regulatory agencies are involved. An updated checklist is required whenever changes are made to these supervening laws or regulations, which means each business or business unit must monitor for these changes and update the checklists accordingly. In addition, monitoring the performance of inspectors can be time consuming and error prone. A completed checklist returned by an inspector after an inspection may not always yield accurate inspection results, as the quality of the inspection may vary from inspector to inspector. Thus, monitoring inspector performance may require on-site supervision of inspections at the time of the inspection or a second inspection performed shortly thereafter.